The Struggles of a Fanfic Author
by apriiil
Summary: Lucy's fed up with how disheartening writing her stories has become, and Gajeel gives her the harsh advice that she really needed to hear. One-shot.


_**A/Ns:** This stemmed from another rant I had on tumblr, where I posted all of my legacy story stats and pointed out how disheartening and disgusting this fandom has become with its lack of feedback (unless you happen to be a super popular writer, in which case, you're the obvious exception to this). Anyway, this was what came from it, and... _

_I think I said everything I needed to in this. And yes, the advice Gajeel gives is what I feel like at the moment. Harsh? Maybe. But, what do you expect. This fandom breaks peoples' souls._

* * *

Gajeel arrived home on Friday evening to find his wife of two-years storming around the house, muttering under her breath about something Gajeel couldn't quite hear as she gathered up all the laundry to be done – Friday night was washing night, after all.

When she spied him and hear the door closed, Lucy only turned and pointed at him, and then the washing basket she carried on her hip. "You, strip. Now."

He didn't bother arguing as he dropped his satchel down on the ground and began, well… stripping. First it was the tie, then his belt when he dropped on the ground by his feet, then it was the black dress shirt he'd rolled up to his sleeves, and then, his pants, leaving him in nothing but the stark white boxers. Admittedly, when Gajeel gathered up his clothes and then carried them over to his wife to drop them in the basket, he was just a little terrified. Sure, he was used to her bad moods, but they happened so infrequently, that when they did… They were bad.

 _Real_ bad.

But, he wouldn't be a very good husband if he didn't ask what was wrong. So he did. Cautiously. And from a distance, since he had to go retrieve his belt and bag before he decided to follow her down to the laundry room. "Uh, Bunny?" he began. "You okay? Bad day at work or somethin'?"

"No. Work was fine," Lucy snapped. Work had been wonderful, if anything. Her boss had even told her that she was in line for a big promotion if she kept up the work she was doing.

Gajeel scratched the back of his head, one arm still clutching his satchel to his stomach. "Well, uh… You mad at me, then?" It was worth asking, as far as he could see. But truth be told, he didn't exactly know why Lucy would be mad at him anyway. He hadn't forgotten anything, as far as he could tell – their anniversary wasn't for another four months, and her birthday wasn't until July.

Her face softened just enough to smile lightly at him between dropping the clothes into the washing machine. "No, I'm not mad at you," she said.

 _Oh, thank fucking god._ "Salamander, then?"

"Strangely, no."

"…Well, I got nothin'." Gajeel shrugged. He was beat. If it wasn't work, and if it wasn't him, and if it wasn't Natsu who had pissed her off… Then, what the fuck was it? He legitimately had no clue what it was.

Lucy sighed and slammed the washing machine lid shut, fiddling with the dials until she had the right settings before she pressed the start button. Gajeel wanted to know what had pissed her off so much? Then she'd tell him – or more accurately, she'd show him.

She set the empty washing basket down, pried her husband's bag and belt from his arms, and then dragged him out of the laundry room and back to the living room where she pushed him down onto the sofa. "Bunny?"

"Just wait there for a second," she told him. And then she was off to fetch her laptop from her desk in the corner of the room, leaving Gajeel sitting almost completely naked in the living room (well, it was his house, so it wasn't like it was a first for him) and twiddling his thumbs while waiting for her to return. She sat down next to him and placed her open laptop on the coffee table in front of them, and after quickly opening up one of her bookmarks, she sat back, pointing to the screen before crossing her arms, and said, " _That_ is why I'm in such a bad mood."

Gajeel leant forward to peer at the table on the screen. In one column, he recognised the names of all of Lucy's stories, but the rest of the columns were just numbers that didn't really mean much to him. "Alright, what am I looking at exactly?" he asked.

"Total views, reviews, follows…" Lucy mumbled. "Basically all the combined statistics for each of my stories."

He took a closer look, bringing the laptop up and sitting it on a pillow on his lap. His brow furrowed as he read each of the numbers, quickly going over the math in his head while simultaneously being amazed as hell – the woman fucking _wrote_ , and from what he could see, each one of her stories, the ones that had left Lucy's side of the bed empty for countless nights because she'd been awake and trying to desperately finish editing a chapter for her readers, were longer than a lot of actual, published books.

But the math… The math, Gajeel already knew, was the reason Lucy was in such a foul mood.

"Wait… Are you fucking serious?" He looked between the story he knew to be her most recent one – a small four-chapter piece that she'd been plotting and working on for the last three months alone, and had ended with a grand total of thirty-seven thousand words. That one, even Gajeel himself had read, and sure, he might be biased because he was married to her, but he'd damn well loved it. It had also made him cry, but that wasn't the point. "Seventy-six favourites, twenty-one follows, and… Three reviews…"

"Yep."

"Three. Fucking. Reviews."

"And two of them were just _'Awesome!'_ , too."

He looked at the numbers for the rest of her stories, and he quickly realised that they weren't much better. Her 'long-fic', the one she'd started a few months after they'd been married: eight-hundred follows, and two-hundred reviews for over twenty chapters. That… Hell, that pissed _Gajeel_ off, too. For the amount of people supposedly reading it each month, Gajeel thought she should be getting a whole lot more than _eight fucking reviews_.

"That's fuckin' weak, Bunny," he muttered. He couldn't bear to look at the rest of them, because he knew he'd just get even more pissed off. As soon as the laptop was closed and put back on the coffee table, Gajeel didn't even hesitate to wrap his arms around his wife's shoulders and pull her against him, tucking her head under his chin. "Fuck 'em all. You deserve better than that." Hell, if he had his own account, he'd be leaving reviews and giving feedback on every fucking chapter and story she wrote. Just because she deserved it – and not because he thought she was fucking amazing. But because of how much work she'd put into those stories. That alone was enough.

She laughed weakly, settling herself into her husband's arms. "Thanks, Gaj," she whispered. He was biased, sure, but… He had a point.

Lucy had always thought she deserved more than the few measly comments she got, but she was also incredibly proud of everything she wrote. She knew she wasn't the best writer out there – she definitely had her own people she worshipped and only dreamed of being as good as – but she knew she wasn't the worst, either. Far from it.

But she poured her damn soul into all those stories, the ones that she wrote just to share with the world, and not because she just felt like sitting down and wasting twelve hours of her life one day on a six-thousand word one-shot and then thought, _'Hey, this is good. Maybe I'll post it. I have nothing to lose from this.'_ But all that effort, all that work, and all that damn time she'd spent plotting, and writing, and editing, and doing so much damn research so she could make her stories as realistic as they possibly could be… Sometimes, Lucy just felt like it wasn't worth it.

If she'd wanted to share her work, her pride, and get nothing in return from it (well, apart from a paycheck, maybe), she would've written an actual book and tried to get it published. But she hadn't done that. She'd posted her stories online, _free_ for the world to see and to criticise to their heart's content. She'd posted them online, where it was so damn easy to give actual feedback, because that was what she'd _wanted_. She'd wanted feedback. She'd wanted to know what people thought of her stories. She'd wanted to know when she'd made them cry, made them hate her, made them want to meet her in fucking person just to hug her and tell her that she was their favourite person.

…But she didn't get that. Not very often, at least.

She was lucky to get a few people saying 'thanks!' and 'I really loved this, keep it up!'. And sure, she loved those people – even if the people who did bother leaving those simple, yet _amazing_ reviews were the same people who did it for all of her stories… But everyone else?

It was everyone else who didn't bother spending thirty, or maybe sixty seconds of their life to leave her a message, telling her what they thought, that made Lucy wonder if it was worth it.

"It's just really, _really_ disheartening, you know?" she murmured.

"I can imagine, Bunny. But do you know what you should do?"

"Quit writing?" she laughed meekly.

"No." Fuck no. Gajeel didn't want her to quit. It was what she enjoyed the most. And Gajeel would be damned if he let his wife drop something she loved doing so much, just because of a few lazy assholes (well, a few hundred, it seemed, but whatever).

"Then what?"

"Forget about 'em," he said. Lucy lifted her head to look at him, a silent question burning her eyes and Gajeel couldn't help but grin. "Forget the dicks that don't bother leaving reviews and shit. They ain't worth yer time."

Lucy's brow furrowed as she sat back against the lounge, tucking her feet up under her. "That's a bit harsh… They still read my stories," she mumbled. Well, most of them do, at least. Sometimes. "I can't really just forget them."

"Sure ya can."

"I don't see how…"

"Write for the people that _do_ comment on yer stuff," Gajeel explained. "They're the ones that are worth yer time. Fuck the rest." They couldn't justify sparing a few extra seconds to do more than pressing one damn button, so why should Lucy continue treating them like the rest of her fans – the _good_ ones, at least.

What she did… She did it all for free. She wrote full-length fucking novels for people to read for _free_. No one fucking _deserved_ to get all of that crap given to them, yet Lucy – and millions of others – did it all the damn time. And a lot of time, they did it without getting any feedback at all.

And Lucy had to admit, that as she considered her husband's words, that he made sense. Sure, the amount of loyal readers and reviewers she did have was an incredibly small number (compared to the amount of people that followed and read her stories as a whole), but maybe…

Maybe the amount didn't matter.

Maybe it was a case of quality over quantity.

Maybe she really should just write for that handful of people that _did_ spare those few seconds to tell her that they liked the new chapter – because in comparison to how many hours, weeks, and months she'd put into writing those stories, a few seconds was literally _nothing_.

Maybe, she should follow Gajeel's advice.

Granted, it probably wasn't the nicest, but… Well, no one could expect someone to keep pouring their heart into something like that without getting any feedback forever, could they? Lucy had just reached the point where she was so goddamn fed up with how little authors like her got back, that internally telling all those people who acted like they deserved to have everything given to them on a silver fucking platter and for free, to just fuck the hell off was beginning to sound like a really good idea.

When she wrote, she was going to write for that handful of people who bothered leaving a review, no matter how short. They were the ones that had kept her going for as long as she had been. And for them… For them, Lucy would keep writing.

 _They_ were the ones who deserved it.

"You know what? I think you're right, Gajeel," Lucy said as a smile graced her lips.

"Bunny, I'm always right."

She rolled her eyes at him and sighed quietly before getting up for the lounge, picking her laptop up to take it back to her desk. "Yeah, yeah… Now hurry up and go put some clothes on."

* * *

 _ **A/Ns:** Quick edit because of an idiotic and ignorant review: if you think this was me trying to be 'subtle', you're wrong. The point of this story was so fucking obvious and that was the point. _


End file.
